In addition to streaming services , which have seen a huge increase in usage due to the coronavirus, cloud computing services have also been hit by the pandemic . As the company said in a blog post on Saturday, Microsoft Azure has seen a staggering increase in usage, more than 775% in areas where quarantines have been implemented .
The Azure Cloud not only hosts virtual machines, but also other services, such as Microsoft Teams, PowerBI, and Windows Virtual Desktop.
Microsoft its Teams software, with users logging over 900 million minutes of calls per day in just one week. The Slackis now one of the most popular communication platforms, used by 44 million users. Similarly, Windows Virtual Desktop saw its usage numbers increase by 3x.
Obviously, this huge increase has exceeded all the company's expectations, as well as its operational capabilities. For this reason, and to manage to balance the situation, Microsoft has created a series of changes.
The company has initially lowered the resolution of Teams videos, while also making other changes such as reducing user login control. The tech giant recently announced new features for Teams, such as a filter that will remove ambient sounds when a video call is in progress.
Microsoft Azure in the fight against COVID-19
Microsoft announced that it will prioritize cloud for immediate response teams, healthcare services, medical procurement systems, health bots, etc.
There are some temporary restrictions, which include limiting the number of free offerings, to preserve cloud capacity for existing customers.
There will also be a limit on some resources for new subscribers. However, users can make support requests to increase resources or switch to a less crowded Azure region if their requirements are not met.
The company said it is working on increasing the capacity of its Azure Cloud services and that the changes will be visible soon. It also claimed that despite the huge increase in use of the services, no particular problems have been observed in their operation.
With millions of people now working from home, which has increased internet usage overall, the company is also trying to ensure that gaming services don't disrupt important work. It's constantly monitoring Xbox Live to stay up to date on usage times.
Microsoft isn't the only company struggling to balance its online services. Recently, YouTube, along with other streaming services, reduced video quality to compensate for increased usage.
